Laborers Mark 1st Year of Program : Work: The city-sponsored project for day work hopefuls has built a sense of community on a dusty lot in North Hollywood. There are still too few jobs, however.

They abandoned the street corner hiring sites of the east San Fernando Valley a year ago, tired of the dangers and indignities: unscrupulous employers, hostile merchants, suspicious police, fellow job-hunters desperate enough to fight for a day’s work.

Roberto Arias and his friends at a city-sponsored day labor site in North Hollywood are still struggling to survive. There are still too many men and not enough jobs.

But at a ceremony Thursday marking the first year of the city program, they celebrated their efforts to build a sense of community in a dusty industrial lot.

“We look at life in a different way now,” said Arias, a 27-year-old Salvadoran immigrant who gave a speech in Spanish to an audience of day laborers and dignitaries, including Councilman Ernani Bernardi.

“We have realized that we are not alone in this country. We are united. We support one another. It has been a benefit to us and to the community,” Arias said.

The North Hollywood day labor program is the second in Los Angeles. Like another site in the Harbor City area, it offers an organized, humane alternative to informal street corner hiring sites around the city where congregated day laborers have drawn complaints from merchants and residents about sometimes unruly, intimidating behavior.

Employers using the city-funded site hire workers through a lottery and negotiate wage rates ahead of time, with a $5 hourly minimum. That cuts down on conflict, protects workers from being cheated by employers and allows laborers to interact as friends rather than rivals. As they wait for work at outdoor picnic tables, the men receive English classes, coffee, food donated by community groups, and legal counseling on immigration and wage-related issues.

Such attractions have reduced the number of men who wait for work along nearby Lankershim Boulevard, the old hiring area, program officials and workers said.

As to measuring the effectiveness of the program, an oversupply of workers for the jobs available remains the reality of life as a day laborer, particularly during tough economic times.

“The fundamental problem is the lack of employers,” said Arias, who has been active in organizing fellow workers and distributing flyers urging would-be employers to use the program. “This has really been a difficult task. You have guys out on the corners willing to work for $3.”

About 15% of 38,000 applicants for work--many of them repeat registrations by the same workers--have been hired during the past year, compared to about 23% at the Harbor City site, which benefits from job opportunities in a wealthy residential area nearby, said Alonso Almeida of the city Community Development Department.

More than 100 men a day show up at the North Hollywood site, often because of a spirit of mutual aid and camaraderie that has grown during the past year.

“We talk, we tell jokes, we try to help each other out,” said painter Mario Estrada, 19, who came to Los Angeles alone from Guatemala four years ago and lives with four other day laborers who use the site. “I have gotten to know a lot of people who helped me out with problems.”

Estrada said word has traveled fast among the “trabajadores de las esquinas” --”workers of the street corners”--about the recent conflicts in suburbs such as Agoura Hills and Santa Clarita, where the growing presence of day laborers has been met with arrests, INS raids and other tough measures.

“We feel bad for them,” Estrada said. “You see, it can always be worse.”